Tag Archives: developmental disability

(TRIGGER WARNING: There is noted talk of mental health crisis in this post)

I know it has been a while since I posted on this blog. It has been a long time because I am finishing my Master of Arts in Disability Studies at CUNY School of Professional Studies this Spring Semester 2019. I also turn 40 years old this year. I have been through a lot since 1997 to 2018. From that whole time which is a 20 year lifespan, I made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life, was very naive, and even went through 2 psychiatrists during that time. The first psychiatrist during that time of the first 8 years was a complete mess and utter disaster which caused the beginning of a living nightmare for me.

During the second half the 20 year lifespan, was seeing a different psychiatrist to try to stop the living nightmare from occurring. The living nightmare continued unfortunately until very recently in October 2018, when it started to subside and ease more and more. Now, I have to clean up everything that happened from 1997 when I first started my undergraduate schooling to October 2018 and take responsibility for everything. The best thing I can say will help me through this process is finishing my capstone to complete my Master of Arts degree in Disability Studies.

One of the things I learned in graduate school at CUNY is that I learned the process of coming up with my own ideas and learned that I don’t have agree with everyone while certainly I don’t even have to disagree with everyone either. I just have to come up with my own ideas and add to the discussions that are already happening. I also learned what I want to do with Disability studies. A strength is to use my knowledge and passion in Disability studies to use media like film to create media for the public to understand the message. I even made my first movie in 2017 when taking a noncredit class at School for Visual Arts in digital filmmaking. I met a friend from School for Visual Arts who is an actor to help me film it. It is on YouTube and this past summer I went to Joey Travolta’s Film Camp in New Jersey where I met someone to help me caption the film. I also do other things too with the paintings I make and the poetry I write as well.

Yet, I also have to learn from all the mistakes I made from 1997 to 2018 as well and there were too many of them. From being too adamant about choosing an undergraduate major as a Freshmen right out of high school to being too ashamed to admit a medication that is used for OCD caused me to be suicidal in Spring 1998. I told medical professionals I was hallucinating because I was too naive and thought telling that sounded better.

I actually did The Moth at the JCC Manhattan for the 2014 Reel Abilities telling my story in less than 5 minutes about my path to autism acceptance starting off with the experience from Spring 1998. It didn’t make it past the dress rehearsal. However, The Moth and the other participants, thought I should have done the final performance telling my story. However, it was the decision of Reel Abilities to choose who they wanted for the final performance. Everyone else loved my story. So, they never chose my story.

Anyway, from Spring 1998 to October 2018, I started on a whole lot of medications that literally distorted my thinking and created a living nightmare. When I finally left the first psychiatrist who started this, I saw a new psychiatrist in 2005 to this present day who wanted to change my medication all that time. This new psychiatrist confirmed what I know now that I am Autistic. However, it took him until October 2018 to change my medication to a different class of medication when the living nightmare finally came to an end.

One can only imagine all the stupidity and mistakes that occurred from 1997 to 2018. However, one can also know the positive things that happened too. I also learned recently since October 2018, sometimes when people see positive changes in the person who starts to feel good about themselves, those people don’t like it especially when they see the person who feels more positive no longer gives their power away. Hence, we then learn who really cares.

Many of the things I did in that 20 year lifespan, I wish I could take back and change, but I can’t. Instead I have to move forward with my life experiences from those 20 years taking the good with the bad. Every experience I had was a learning experience and it was the path I needed to go through whether I like it or not. Whatever experiences I will have in the future from this day moving forward, I will be ready for gaining the wisdom from those past 20 years and never go back to rehash any of those past experiences. They were just experiences I needed to go through to get to the present day.

As I move forward, I have to say that my experiences in graduate school has given me the opportunity to grow tremendously. I even did an unpaid internship as an elective during Spring 2018 for the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD). I learned so much from the Commissioner of the MOPD, Victor Calise and his whole staff. From that internship, I impressed so many people.

When I put the internship on my LinkedIn account after the semester was over, a connection I had for like 10 years or so, saw it, and emailed me to interview with him. The workplace was very close to where I live and is at the local independent living center. I interviewed with this independent living center and now I am working part time there while I finish my Masters degree. My last semester in graduate school I will be busy doing a lot of reflecting and creating the project I want to do for my capstone. When I graduate this May to receive my Masters degree, I will remember that it will be something I earned and will be proud of that I finally did something for myself without any influences from anyone else. As a professor once told me too, no one can take that away from me.

I will also remember where I came from during the 20 year lifespan that wound up being a living nightmare for not only myself, but my family too. I just need to remember it was the past, and now I can move forward. As I move forward, I can only remember how much I wanted to start graduate school, but couldn’t start right away. So, I took an undergraduate disability studies course at CUNY that the professor teaching it was very impressed with me, and helped me to start my graduate program by writing a recommendation for me to become a Kennedy Fellow for my first semester in graduate school. I can also remember something my professors told me during my first graduate semester at CUNY, to always think broadly and it is okay not to be perfect. I will always remember that. Now, I am a Kennedy Fellow once again as I finish up this degree.

It has been a long journey to get to this point with the new medication and I feel happy.

Normal
nORMAl
NORmal
norMAL
NORMAL!
I feel the frustration,
is it normal?
Is it supposed to be passing for norMAL?
WHAT IS dammmit, NORMAL?
Normal is…
difficult,
NORMAL is…
frustrating,
NORmal is…
OMG!
NORMAL is…
OMG…I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!
NORmal is…
Oh my goodness, OMG, Oh my GOD!
NORMAL, what can I say?
NORMAL, it is hard
It’s like very few can pass for it,
yet MANY embrace it.
It’s so very stimulating or in this case,
TRigGERRing to have to pass for norMAL!~~~

NORMAL IS…
hurtful,
especially when I am not NoRMAL,
including my friends who are not NORmal either,
or even whenever I walk down a street
I see MANY struggling to be NorMAl,
NORMAL is a social construction,
it is passing for…
what America wants,
it is passing for…
being non-disabled or NON-NEURODIVERGENT,
also, when EVERYONE is born NEURODIVERGENT,
but only PASS for NORMAL
and embrace NORMALITY
only to
ACCEPT NORMALITY
AND
Oppress The MANY citizens out there who CANNOT,
especially when
you are NEUROQUEER,
OR even when
you are not one of the BINARY genders
when gender is FLUID and is non-binary,
NOT saying I am non-binary, I AM JUST OPEN-MINDED
to everyone’s gender differences and EVERYONE’s iDeNTitiES,
and the self-determination of being WHO WE ARE INDIVIDUALLY,
and being the person we are MEANT TO BE and ARE in this world.
NOrMaL, what the heck is it,
when it’s all about when WHITE MaLE Christians who created the damn word many years ago,
who wanted EVERYONE to conform to THEM,
and who WANTED everyone to be non-disabled, non-neurodivergent, and labelled by IQ.
AND, who also wanted EVERYONE to look, feel, and think the SAME way,
How NORMAL is that when SO many are different races, of different religions,
of different thinking types, of different emotional types, of different FEeLIngs,
OF different concurrences acting at the SAME time,
OR of different lapses of time splitting in their heads,
and of different genders and differences in disability,
BECAUSE everyone can DO it,
NO one is IMMUNE to think differently, WE are CREATIVE which is WHY normal was made,
which is why things are DiFFerent.

Normalizing what?,

by theamazinJ

MORE importantly why WE all make MISTAKES especially with TRY(ING) to NORMALIZE America,
and in many CASES NORMALIZE the WHOLE WORLD, but many CANNOT be NORMAL,
MANY cANNOt think NORMAL, many CANnot feel norMAL
because NORMAL is painful especially when someone is disabled,
especially painful when someone is NEURODIVERGENT
when being NeuroDiVERgent is not VERY embraced
and people want to accept NORMAL as the ‘in’ thing as the BRAINS and the one with IQ,
and neurodivergent as OUT, as the ‘OTHER’, and the one that is WEIRD or FREAK or INCOMPETENT or
STUPID or even the re2379427d,
eVERyone is really neurOdivergent, but many seem to discount it, seem to disregard it, or even THINK SAMENESS is the ‘in’ thing,
when EVERYONE is really different,
everyone is really …
CREATIVE, emoTIONal, lEarnING all the time, brainy, INTELLIGENT, gaining WISDOM everyday, has their own WaY of doing things.
while everyone can …
BREAKDOwn, everyone can..
meltdown,
everyone can…
hit rockbottom to only rise to the TOP,
EVERYONE can…
MAKE a MASTERPIECE OR Make an invention OR make a discovery from within themselves that CREATES connection
and CREATES something with their MINDS even when it is just very small BECAUSE it really is VERY BIG for the world,
just like NORMAL was and just the way NORMAL was created
ESPECIALLY when normal is destructive to a human being’s personhood and just when normal can also construct certain elements of life,
because normal is paining and hurting MANY in this world
our peers who are not of the binary genders like you or I,
our peers who are NEUROQUEER
our peers who are a(sexual) or even sexual,
OUR peers who are mixed race, or not of the same race as you or I,
OR the way me and my peers who believe in different religious or spiritual thinkings,
or how many citizens who are disabled, neurodivergent seem to experience the world differently
even when the disability and neurodivergence is autism,
or even when it is cerebral palsy, down syndrome, or many other different developmental disabilities
because having developmental disability is NOT considered normal and is not considered intelligent and
seems to always associate with judgement, always associates with stupidity and incompetence and not knowing what is right or what is wrong,
because in the end, it’s normal, it’s abnormal, it’s just living, it’s just life.

Normalizing Why?

by theamazinJ

Being developmentally disabled is
being more INTELLIGENT than peers who embrace normality can even fathom,
its’s being more FUN and comical than one can even think about,
AND, is being more empathic and CREATIVE at the same time than any other citizens can even feel and think,
Being developmentally disabled or even have psychiatric disability is a thing, but it does not have to mean the person has to be this normal…
or has to abide by the rules that the leaders of normal created years ago,
Being developmentally disabled and having psychiatric disability is part of being human,
It’s a way that life sets us off, it’s a way to experience the world, and it’s a way of being intelligent differently,
since anyone of us can have psychiatric disability because it’s part of human experiences,
and developmental disability is a thing that happens to many, but not all, as a way to know being human is IMPERFECT,
and being human is MORTAL, and being human, everyone will have different ways to express the genes of the human race,
EVERYONE is GREAT, everyone is GOOD, and EVERYONE thinks different, and MOST importantly NORMAL was just a story or concept created but does not have to be embraced by anyone.
I am male, I am neurodivergent, I am autistiC, I am Jewish, I am spiritual, I am a artist, I am a beginning filmmaker, I am a scholar, I read many books and articles, I am a poet,
I am a person of science, I am many identities, I always have my own mind,
and most importantly,
I am J.